


what you do to me

by Carofine



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-Canon, and iliterally didnt watch s8 also alluras alive but shes also not mentioned so uh, okay like i started this the DAY BEFORE s8 and when s8 came out i . forgot about it, sorry lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 06:32:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17976269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carofine/pseuds/Carofine
Summary: Sometimes, you meet someone. And everything changes





	what you do to me

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I wrote this before Season 8, mostly, and I never watched season 8 because uhm...I don't need that in my life. So. This doesn't really go that into the actual events of the show cuz I more just really love how Keith and Lance have such a huge impact on the other and wanted to explore that and also say something optimistic because when I wrote this before s8 I was sad about Voltron ending. See now I'm just like thank God it's over but. 
> 
> So yeah this is more of an abstract character/relationship study than anything else. Also it's really short. I just really feel like I need to post a klance fic to motivate me to post more
> 
> Also this is really short because I have like 10 Klance fics in progress and I feel like as a writer I just need to POST ONE ALREADY so. This is un-betad and all that.

The End.

The Final Destination. The red light. The feeling in your stomach that finally says “It’s over. It’s really over.” The feeling between death and light where your fingers stop feeling and you stop breathing and everything is irreversibly over. All of this had flashed into Lance’s mind and being and stardust as he’d felt the shock of the explosion run through his body. Then there had come a point where the shock kept running, into his veins his blood his atoms, but he could no longer feel it in his arms, could no longer feel the static in his hair. In that moment, Lance knew it was the End. It was over. This was the finality, the end of the book, the author’s note.

And Lance had died.

* * *

Keith was fast. A fast pilot, fast runner, fast breather, fast acter, slow thinker. He is red and far-reaching like fire, and his whole life he’d relied on that. He’d come into the world already trying to go somewhere as quickly as he could, to some end goal. Some finish line that he couldn’t see, couldn’t visualize, couldn’t even  _ fathom _ . But he ran, arms tight and jaw clenched. And he only got faster as time went on, the gravel he kicked up behind him turning to desert sand turning to stars and galaxies. He wasn’t running from something. He was running  _ towards _ something, something he didn’t understand except for that whatever it was it meant The End. It meant it’d be over. Not in the sense that he’d die, but in the sense that whatever he’d needed to do would be done, and he’d go back to how things were.

It never occurred to him that you can’t go back to how things were if the way things were were the same as they were now. So he kept on rushing through things, forgetting, not staying long enough to remember.

And then Keith met Lance.

And something about Lance and his calming blue  _ everything  _ and his somehow icy warmth made Keith — lightning fast never stopping never listening never caring never  _ anything  _ Keith…

Something about Lance made Keith slow down.

* * *

It took Lance dying for him to really understand living.

He didn’t see God or anything like that. That wasn't what changed. It was experiencing the feeling of This Is Over and how it was was unreplicatable, unexplainable, and yet… somehow familiar. It was a feeling that Lance had felt before and yet never been able to identify because it’d always been to small, yet too much for him to understand. But now that he’d experienced an overdose of this Finality, he realized when he’d felt it before. Of course it’d been acute, not all-encompassing and everything and definite like dying had been, but more like a small pang of “It  _ might _ not be over, but it  _ almost _ definitely is.”

The three recent moments that Lance realized he’d felt that tiny prick in his neck we’re easy to identify once he understood. When they’d first been told they needed to defend the universe, when Allura had hugged him, and when Keith had left.

Each had come with that feeling. That, feeling of  _ This is over, probably. _

* * *

At first, being happy had been almost impossible for Keith.

“Patience yields focus.” Shiro would always say. Keith wasn’t sure when, but at some point it became clear that, additionally, “Patience yields happiness.” That slowing down and enjoying life as it was now was just nicer. That if you let the sand in the hourglass just trickle like it was supposed to you wouldn’t accidentally break it and get glass in your hands. Keith understood this intellectually, at some point after arriving in space and becoming a paladin, but he’d still always been running. He couldn’t just suddenly get rid of that urge.

Lance was slow. Calm, like water in slow motion, buoyant and soft and malleable, yet somehow firm. And that slow motion — that roundness — it began to seep into Keith, slowly and over time, diffusing into Keith’s pores and the air trapped beneath his gloves.

Keith could pinpoint the first time Lance had done it; the somehow making himself part of Keith until everything was changed.

It’d been after Keith and Allura had been locked out of the castle, not even a week after becoming the paladins of Voltron. The whole time Keith had felt quick, sharp, like an arrow splitting down another or a bullet fired into a void. He’d been going and going and  _ going _ and trying to get in trying to get this  _ done.  _ Everything had gone by like the view from a racecar, blurry and fast and significant but not really, and then he’d kicked Sendak, the forcefield had gone up and it had all been blurry and like an elevated heart rate, another passing event, another thing to brush past on the quest to get to the Goal. Keith went to Lance, who seemed to be flickering in and out of consciousness, and reached out his hand. “Lance, are you okay?”

Lance grabbed his hand and everything came to a stop.

Keith  _ felt _ the pressure in his knees as he crouched to be at eye level with Lance. He  _ saw  _ the color of Lance’s eyes, one brown and one a slight blue-grey that looked like the sky right before a thunderstorm. He heard the way Lance’s voice shook ever so slightly like a piece of cardstock in the wind, stable, but the shake was still there, as he said, “We did it. We  _ are  _ a good team.” He  _ felt _ the warmth of Lance’s fingers in his hand, barely there through the fabric of their suit’s gloves but  _ warm  _ nonetheless. He  _ saw _ the barely there freckles on Lance’s cheeks that he’d never taken to the time to notice before.

It was still. It was slow and long and Keith wanted the moment to stretch on, didn’t want to pull back, to move on to the next thing, to get this and _ everything  _ over with.

Suddenly, the finish line didn’t appeal to Keith so much.

* * *

Lance had never liked endings. He didn't finish most books that he read, not because he didn't love reading, but because partway through, if he really loved a book, it would hit him that he was going to get to a point where it ended if he kept going, and the thought made him sad, and so he'd just...stopped.

Lance lived his life in slow motion, never letting go. He still had his first teddy bear, he still had his first map showing nearby galaxies, he still had his first backpack because when his mother had said they should throw it out he'd insisted they keep it. "Nadia or Sylvio can use it." He'd said, and his Mom had relented, even though they both knew Luis would definitely prefer buying his kids new backpacks instead of his younger brother's beaten and dirty backpack. When he'd died, Lance most clearly remembered simply just thinking "This sucks." Because it did. Endings sucked. Closing the book and knowing it was over and there was  _ nothing  _ else coming, no big possible future to look forward too...it made Lance feel empty.

It wasn’t like Lance had no goals. He had a future he could imagine, and he wanted things— big things. He wanted to become a fighter pilot. He wanted to go to space and brush his fingers against the stars and see how it felt to be in that completely empty fullness. He wanted to have kids who he could come home to and shower with love and kindness. And he wanted all of that soon, but not so much that he was in a rush. He didn’t want to grow up, because nobody does once they actually  _ are _ an adult. So Lance took things slow, in the moment, looking to the future but never really clawing at it until it was in his grasp.

Until Keith happened.

Keith had shown up through Lance’s binocular vision and they’d wrapped Shiro’s arms around their shoulders and the Blue lion had flown through the portal and Allura had told them they had to stay and Defend the Universe and suddenly Lance couldn’t be a kid anymore and there was a near future he wanted  _ now now now.  _ He wanted to go home, to his family, to his bedroom and kindergarten backpack and the way things were, because this whole fighting in a space war thing was  _ not  _ something he signed up for. Spending all this time with Keith  _ I’m So Much Better Than You Without Even Trying  _ Kogane.

Lance wasn't sure when it happened, but at some point that future he wanted to run towards so desperately changed. At some point between soft looks and "Hey man," and the way Keith looked in the light of the setting sun, Keith became the future Lance suddenly wanted so desperately. The one he raced towards with heavy breaths and jitteriness in his fingers and the persistent need of  _ now _ and  _ today _ .

At some point, Lance grew sick of waiting for the end. At some point the end became the only thing he wanted anymore. At some point Keith became that ending, that final chapter, that last page before the author's note, in the story Lance wrote in his mind, and at some point, Lance decided to finish something.

Because the last page wasn't really the end. It was the start. The very sad ending of something good and the very happy start of something  _ amazing _ .

* * *

They’d defeated Lotor and Sendak and Zarkon, and had literally landed after defeating Haggar about less than a minute ago when suddenly Keith just  _ couldn’t _ wait. He had gotten so good at sitting still and enjoying the now and patience and blue, but when Haggar had gone down, suddenly the finish line was in  _ sight _ , lit in white flames, and the patience and slowness that Lance had somehow put upon Keith suddenly seemed gone. And suddenly, Keith didn’t want to slow down. But the thought of this (he couldn't tell you what “this” was) bring Over made him sick. He didn’t want to cross the line, to go to the point of no return, to close the book. He wanted to veer off course, to run off the edge of a cliff and fall into some new world, and he couldn’t trek through woods and mountains and beaches to find the edge of what could be. He wanted it  _ now now now now now now now GO GO GO GO GO _

Keith ran  _ (ran ran ran feet hitting the ground) _ out of the mouth of the black lion. Lance was simply walking out of the red lion, helmet still on, something in his steps light and airy. Keith came to a stop right outside Red's open mouth. He couldn't wait. He didn't want this to be the finish line, he didn't want this to be  _ it _ , but all of a sudden he needed to be be fast. He needed to say it.

“I’m in love with you.” Keith said from where he stood on the solid ground.

Lance’s eyes widened, and he stopped, rigid, right at the edge of Red's mouth. For some reason Keith wasn’t even a tiny bit shaky. Even if this went wrong — horribly horribly wrong — this was the culmination of...something. This was the climax, the peak, the stars in the sky.

"Keith—" Lance said, eyes still huge, and blue, and beautiful.

"I know this is weird. That I'm telling you now. But I—You just—I wanted so bad for everything to be over, of course I did. The war and everything... but I can't help that I don't want this to be over if it means never seeing you again. But it  _ is  _ over. It's over and if we never see each other again I thought you should know. I  _ wanted _ you to know." Keith said, heart pounding like it was his feet hitting against the asphalt, against the desert sand, against the skies.

Lance's mouth was open and silent, and something in Keith broke.

"Bye." He said, turning to leave, because what else could he say? It hurt, it hurt so so much, but this was the price he paid for returning to recklessness. He'd known this could happen. He'd known he would be ending it once and for all if it went wrong. He'd  _ known.  _ So he tried as best he could to ignore the fire behind his eyes and the shakiness in his chest and—

Something grabbed him by the waist and arm and spun him around, and before Keith could process anything — it was all too fast too red too afraid— lips were on his and Lance's arms were on his waist and Keith's own were suddenly running through brown hair that was just as soft as Keith had always imagined it would be alone in his room on a Blade of Marmora base.

Keith didn't know how long they kissed. It might have been ten seconds, it might have been an hour. It felt like forever.  _ This  _ was patience; Lance's hands on him and his on Lance and the heightened pressure that his toes felt because Lance was still just a couple inches taller and Keith had to stand just a little bit on his tiptoes to kiss him.

When they pulled apart, cheeks flushed and eyes damp and breaths shakey, Keith was reminded how amazing the present felt — the reasons why he'd stopped running.

"You are so…" Lance breathed, letting out a disbelieving laugh. "You make me so  _ weird _ ." He said, eyes softening until they looked like they were colored with oil pastels. "I used to hate endings, you know? So so much."

"Well," Keith licked his lips. "Do you like them now or something?" 

"No." Lance said. "They're still sad as hell. But sometimes they're the beginning too, y'know? I didn't get that before. I think I might like them now, sometimes, if they end with me and you." 

Keith could feel his cheeks growing warm, and in corner of his vision he saw Lance's helmet on the ground and he realized somewhere in the back of his mind that Lance must have thrown it off so he could  _ kiss him,  _ and he grinned. 

"I think I'd like that too." He said, words brushing against Lance's lips.

And they kissed again.

* * *

All good things must come to an end.

Wasn't that what people always said? That everything good had to end at some point? Lance had believed it for the longest time. He really had.

But on nights when Keith trudged into the bedroom and fell flat on his face and Lance wrapped his arms around him, and on the days where Keith made the most relieved face when the cries of a baby filled the house and Lance said "I'll handle it," and during all the times where they'd kiss and Lance relished in the feeling of lips against his, and all the times  when Keith was around and Lance still felt the feeling of fluttering in his stomach despite them being married for years...In these times Lance didn't think that was true. 

He never seemed to think that was true when Keith was around.

There was this poem that Lance had read once, that had seemed poignant to him when he was fourteen.  “There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part. So just give me a happy middle. And a very happy start.” He used to think that was true. That endings were nothing but sadness and cold and the terrible emptiness that came with things being over. 

But sometimes endings were the beginning. Sometimes wars were waged and family was missed and lives were lost, but somewhere in between something began. Keith and Lance, neck and neck became hand in hand. 

Lance closed the book he had been reading at the sound of the front door opening. In came Keith, back from his meeting with Shiro about the Blade of Marmora's current plans for the rest of the upcoming Earth year. Lance was already on his feet and leaving a peck on Keith's cheek before the slightly shorter man could so much as let out a  _ "I'm home."  _

"How'd it go Mr. Ambassador?" Lance said as Keith rolled his eyes and acted like he wasn't blushing at Lance's persistent affection as he toed off his shoes. "The report went well?" 

"Yeah, it was fine." Keith said. "Same old same old. Might need to go on a mission to the Ptroplian galaxy to make sure all the Earth aide is transported safely. Shiro said you can come with me if you want." He said, a smile on his face as he walked past Lance and into the kitchen. "Could get a little crazy. We've never been there before." Lance's eyes lit up at the notion of unexplored territory. Giving reports to the Garrison about new galaxies was his second favorite part about his job, and Keith knew that. 

"What about you? How're your kids?" Keith said, asking about Lance's absolute favorite part of his job, and opening the fridge as Lance followed him back into the kitchen.    


"They're great!" Lance said, leaning against the door frame. "I think they're stressed about the upcoming flight patterns practical exam I'm giving them, but I know they're all going to do fine." 

Keith smirked up at Lance and Lance felt those familiar butterflies in his stomach that never went away at the look in his eyes. "I'm sure they will." Keith said, taking out their water filter. "After all, they learned from the best of the best." 

Lance chuckled. "You know it." He said as Keith poured himself a glass of water and sat down. "Alex is going to that concert today, so she's not home yet. And Marco is at his friend's house." Lance said, sliding into his seat next to his husband. Keith hummed in acknowledgment, eyes drifting around the room until they landed on the book that Lance had left closed on the table.

"You done with that thing yet?" Keith asked, nodding towards the book. 

"Yeah," Lance said. "I finished it literally like 10 seconds before you came in."

Keith took a sip of his water and gave Lance one of those soft smiles he loved so much. "And what's the official Mcclain-Kogane verified review?" He asked. 

"I liked it." Lance said, hand reaching towards Keith's free hand out of habit. "It had a happy ending. And you know how much I love a happy ending." His words were soft.

Keith squeezed Lance's hand at that, warm with affection, and scoffed. "You're such a fucking sap." He said, his words lacking any sort of real bite as he leaned to give Lance a peck on the cheek. "Now go grade those papers you've been procrastinating on or you're sleeping alone tonight." 

"But  _ babe, _ " Lance whined, trying to kiss Keith again. Keith pushed him away and glared and even though it lacked any real malice, Lance sighed and said "Fine." before getting up to get the papers in question. 

Since the retirement of Voltron and the shared words of "I love you" Lance had read many happy endings. There was the ending of the TV show about fairies his daughter always made him watch, there was the ending of the book lying on their kitchen table, and there was the ending of everything in some way or another. But out of all of them, Lance decided that his favorite ending was this one, where Keith held his hand and still blushed whenever he said "I love you." 

After all, at some point Keith had made Lance a sucker for happy endings. 

**Author's Note:**

> The poem is one by Shel Silverstein. Feel free to hit me up on my twitter (@crying_korean) tumblr (@crying-korean) or instagram (@barette.tulu) and talk to me about klance or narusasu. 
> 
> Please please PLEASE leave kudos (or comments comments are amazing) if you liked this. It's what motivates me to keep writing.
> 
> Also not to shamelessly PR but I'm modding a zine called ...and we are beginning which focuses on klance after the war! Check it out if you're interested here.  
> https://kl-beginning-zine.tumblr.com/about


End file.
